When I saw these photographs, I was impressed by how the artist is able to take basic settings and make them capture my imagination. A clothes closet like this, for example. I had one of these, and I found it dreary. Augusta Wood makes it a work of art. See here for more great work.
gadgettastic.com has a rundown of Victorinox’s latest addition. Ofcourse there is Swiss Army knife with a USB! They’ve been around since the 128 MB days! 🙂
Fortune has a nice assortment of interesting applications you can run on your iPhone, Blackberry…even for devices that use Google’s Android. Some are pretty far advanced (the BioWallet), and others are very practical (the one for Zipcar, depicted above). There will be a flood of these applications coming out. For now, here are 10 10 cool tools for your mobile phone to get you going.
The blog Unclutterer has lots of great advice on simplifying and improving your life. I like this tip on dealing with the problem of:
Work life creeping into personal life? Try a battery-only weekend
This is especially good advice in the summer. If you do feel the need to work on the weekend, going battery-only will help you focus on getting the essentials done. And once they are done, go for a walk, see a movie, talk with friends, read that stack of books piling up on the shelf/next to your bed.
P.S. That goes for Blackberries and iPhones too. 🙂
For those of you excited about the Beijing Olympics and are interested in having a recording of the highlights of it, NBC tells me that they are “offering a DVD of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies and it is available for purchase on their website www.nbcdvd.com. Other DVDs available include “2008 Beijing General Highlight DVD” and “Michael Phelps: Greatest Olympic Champion…The Inside Story”.
NBC continues to impress me with its innovation, hardwork and success. And not just me: see this article in the NYTimes.com: A Surprise Winner at the Olympic Games in Beijing – NBC
I would argue that it shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a good article nonetheless.
This is a great blog for anyone trying to lose or maintain their weight while working full-time in an office (always a challenge). While it is focused on office workers, it has lots of value for people regardless of where they work. See:
The Office Diet
If you go from “just finishing” a race distance to “how fast do I have to run” to beat a time of X, then you want to check out the Running Times Magazine’s Running Times Pace Charts. They have charts in both miles and kilometers, and cover the most popular race lengths.
Fall is coming soon, and with that will come long distance races. As I am getting ready to run a half-marathon, I will be definely checking it out. You might want to as well.
What is RedBubble about? I took this from the “About” page:
- a place to share the illustrations you create at night,
- a forum to seek feedback on the story you’re writing,
- a creative antidote to the day job,
- lunch break entertainment,
- a gallery to inspire,
- a marketplace to buy and sell unique works of art and,
- a place to be inspired by like–minded people.
What I also like is their approach to artistry. They
believe that everyone’s an artist. We think creative expression and communication should be encouraged and celebrated.
If you are an established artist, RedBubble looks like a great place to get people to see and even buy your work. And if you are not established — heck, if you are not sure you are an artist, but often feel the need to create — then RedBubble could be the place to allow you to make that happen.
So go on, click this button! 
Nicholas Kristof has an interesting article on how he tried to applied to stage a protest during the Olympic Games in Beijing. I am not sure that Chinese citizens would have as easy a go of it as he did, although he acknowledges this.
I’d like to believe what he says in the end, that China will ” become more open and less repressive — not because of the government’s kindness but because of the people’s insistence.” This will be good for the people of China and China itself.
For more on the story, see this.
(flickr photo courtest of Thomas Hawk’s photostream)
Over at NBC‘s Olympics site, they have the U.S. listed ahead of China (65 vs 61) medals.
While here, at this Chinese news site they have China listed ahead of the U.S. with 35 vs 19 gold medals.
In response to the article TIME has on Why Africa Is Still Starving, a number of questions came to mind:
1) Is Africa still starving? All of Africa, or just a part of it? The article mentions Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. While these are signifigant parts of Africa, they are not all of Africa, and I don’t think all of Africa is starving. A more accurate title might have been “Why Northeast Africa is Still Starving”.
2) Is aid from the west a key contributor to the problem? Reading the article, it seems that way to me. However, this article on the Economist.com indicates something else: “too many people eking out a living on too little land, depending on rains that can never be relied on”. At least in Ethiopia. Somalia and Kenya are not mentioned in the Economist article.
3) Are all three countries having the same problems? And are Uganda or the Sudan — nearby neighbors — having the same problems?
It is a good article. It is good to search for and read other sources and to think critically about the situation, too.
(Map linked to is on economist.com’s web site and is associated with the article mentioned)
As can be seen by their headline, Spray-On Condoms: Still a Hard Sell, they clearly do!
P.S. I expect to see this product coming to a Ben Stiller/Adam Sandler very soon.
P.S.S. Nice packaging! 🙂
Jewish World Watch is involved in a number of humanitarian efforts. These are all important, but one that caught my attention was the Solar Cooker Project. By using a very simply designed technology (the solar cooker, pictured above) not only are the women of Darfur can reduce their need for firewood, but they are also less likely to suffer violence as they leave the camp.
I hope the violence ends soon. I also hope this technology continues to be used. It seems like a wise use of “green” technology.
I would encourage you to go to the site here and find out more information as well as how you can help.
P.S. I found out about it on the TIME web site. The video they use is very similar to the one at the JWW site, but for some reason, the voiceover is different. The video at TIME is good, but the JWW site has much more information.
While Michael Phelps is achieving great things at the Beijing Olympics, so is Milorad Cavic. Winning a silver medal in an Olympic event is a great thing in itself. Almost beating Phelps at his prime is even greater.
However, what also impresses me about Cavic is his sportsmanship. It is a virtue too undervalued. It can be associated with losing, and is sometimes faked. However, I think Cavic is a winner who showed true, great sportsmanship. His reponse to Phelps just barely beating him is very impressive. To see what I mean, go to the official site of Milorad Cavic and see.
He’s a great guy. May he continue to do well. And may other emulate him both for his athletic abilities and for his sportsmanship
Over at the excellent tumblelog, What I learned today, is a list of the 14 Ways Starbucks Has Tried to Revitalize its Brand, including:
1. Better coffee
2. Worse coffee (it’s true!)
…
7. Ditch(ing) the music label
…
14.myStackbucksIdea
It’s a nice, succinct list of all the things Starbucks is doing to revitalize. Good for them
How Wings are Attached to the Backs of Angels is a wonderful animated (short) film by Craig Welch and the National Film Board of Canada (nfb). The nfb has a reputation for releasing great animation such as this. “How Wings…” reminds me of Edward Gorey, but it stands on its own.
See:
Note: this film comes in standard and high quality. The high quality shows through here, so watch that version.
While many of the videos from the 80s seem…well, so 80s.. this one has always seemed timeless to me. It’s quite a simple video, but the water and the motion and the minimal setting make it captivating. I also wondered what it must have been like to be so cold — see their breath — and yet so soaking wet.
Great band, great name, great song. Enjoy Heaven (how could you not?):
CNN has striking footage of Turkish journalists being shot while recently covering the outbreak of war in Georgia.
Turkish journalists attacked in Georgia – CNN.com
It’s a terrible reminder of how dangerous war coverage is for journalists. It also never fails to amaze me how quickly and awfully things can turn out in such places.
If you like LOL Cats, you will like LOL Bush. And even if you have NEVER heard of LOL Cats, check out:
LOL Bush: The president at the Olympics
Thanks to guardian.co.uk
One thing I’ve always liked about Style at Home magazine was their articles on small spaces. I went there today to check out doing some new things with their web site (like the blog written by my friend, Laurie! 🙂 ) As I was exploring the site, I found numerous articles on small spaces, all here:
This is great, as is the site in general. Go take a look!
With regards to the question: when should one wear red? There are two occasions when one should wear red:
(Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash )
An interesting fact about how keeping Pigeons on the pill in California dramatically decreased the number of them in the city.
I wonder if this would work for rats, squirrels and racoons?
Bell (Canada) is doing a number of good things lately. One I particularly approve of this: Bell Internet customers now get free Wi-Fi Internet access with no time limits at over 650 Starbucks locations.
It’s a very appealing offer. Better still, the page describing it:
Bell Sympatico Internet at Starbucks- bell.ca
..is clear and easy to understand.
So, full marks for Bell on this.
Catherine Feeny has some lovely music, including one of my recent favourites, “Mr. Blue”. She also has a well made site on MySpace.com. For people who hate the look of MySpace, consider hers here:
MySpace.com – Catherine Feeny – Pop / Folk / Rock – www.myspace.com/catherinefeeny
Go see. And listen, too. Your eyes and ears deserve it.
I honestly don’t know what to say. See for yourself at Gizmodo:
Olympic Fail: Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird’s Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting
James Fallows is a blogger over at theAtlantic.com who is great source for anyone interested in the Beijing Olympics. However, he also wrote this article on how he bypass the restrictions placed on him by the Great Firewall of China:
James Fallows (November 16, 2007) – The best $39.99 I have spent in China (China)
I often wondered how restrictive the firewall is: I have a better idea now.
It’s a very interesting post, as are most of his other posts on China. I’d be curious to know what people who know China much better than I think of his writing.
This is good advice at any time, but if it is something you are interested in doing, it might be easier to do in the summer when just being outside and enjoying the weather is a fun (and cost free) activity. Regardless of when you do it, the article 100 Things to Do During a Money Free Weekend from The Simple Dollar blog is packed with interesting and creative ideas. It’s a good blog generally.
(Nicely done Flickr.com photo from the Vaguely Artistic’s photostream)
Hamlet is timeless. Sometimes in serious ways. And sometimes…well…if you’ve seen the trailers for “Hamlet 2”, you have a sense of the not so serious way.
Speaking of not serious interpretations of Hamlet, Sarah Schmelling has put together a very clever facebook version of Hamlet, here: Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition).
I think Ophelia gets the best part in this version. But judge and laugh for yourself.
(Photo credit: FlySi’s photostream on flickr.com)
At least according to this article: A Week In John McCain’s Shoes — His $520 Ferragamo Loafers, That Is
And why not? He is rich, after all.
Beppi Crosariol has a good article in the Globe and Mail arguing against ordering wine by the glass. I know what he means: once, I ordered a glass of red from a good restaurant and it was warm because the bottle was sitting on the bar fridge! Ugh! That went back.
If you want to order by the glass, see and order what was recently opened, and try and stick with fresh whites. (What is true for glasses also goes for 1/2 litres and anything that comes from an opened bottle. Although in some cases, if it’s a recently opened red, you may get the benefit of the wine opening up a bit.)
See for yourself by reading this: Wine by the glass? I’ll pass
P.S. He also had a nice, snarky comment (on this varietal) that I love:
“(Hey, if you’d wanted a white wine with no flavour, you’d have ordered a pinot grigio.)”
There are some pinot grigios that do have flavour, but why chase them around when there are so many other white varietals that do have taste?
(flickr photo from sunnyUK photostream)
Not too long ago, in Ontario at least, it was hard to get a good bottle of rose. Nowadays, rose/blush/pink wines are all the rage, and you can get plenty in the LCBO. To me, most of these new wines taste very serious, and one of the things I liked about the old roses were that they were not serious. They were meant to be fun summer drinking wines, the way sangria or vinho verde or even sparkling wine should be.
One rose that manages to be both fun and serious comes from Beringer, makers of many a fine wine. When they made their 2007 White Zinfandel from their California Collection :
“the focus was to highlight the fresh red berry, citrus and melon aromas and flavors and round these out with subtle hints of nutmeg and clove. The wine has a youthful exuberance that is appealing to anyone looking for an uncomplicated wine to accompany a meal”
See? it has all those great flavours, plus it is “youthful”, “uncomplicated”, possessing “exuberance”; that all adds up to “fun”! 🙂
It costs a mere $7 in the US and goes for $10 in the general section of the LCBO. So, skip over all those roses in Vintages section and grab some of this. And pick up so vinho verdes while you are at it.
For more info, go to Beringer Vineyards California Collection
Update: you can find more posts I’ve made on wine here
This youtube video shows why. It’s a commercial, but it’s also amazing.
P.S. If you go to YouTube, you can see the “Making of…” the video.
It seems hard to believe, but read this article and see for yourself:
BusinessWeek has an interesting article on how Cheap Photo Sites Pit Amateurs vs. Pros.
The article is interesting for alot of reasons, but one reason in particular for me is this: it is a good example of the long tail in action, with thousands of suppliers of photographs, and aggregators (like flickr) bringing it all together. Professional photographers can complain about this, but it will be in vain, at least in the short term.
I see this spreading to other things as well. I see music next. With sites like MySpace, last.fm and others, the barriers to entry for musicians will become lower and lower, and over time people will listen to a wider variety of artists as greater socialization of music occurs. Eventually it will even happen for books and other forms of writing, although you could argue it has already happened with the proliferation of blogs. Anyone publishing any media now is going to be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of vast amount of new material being created.
At the blog gapingvoid, the author talks in one posting about “Cheap. Easy. Global. Media.” The combination of digitization of material and social
computing technology will make it dead simple for people to create, publish,
and share their work with others. And soon it won’t be just media. Anything that can be digitized is open for this to happen.
The world is becoming open source. Soon it will be open source hardware. Then chemistry. Then biology.
After Twitter, Apple joins the growing number of service providers who are less than stellar in their performance: Were Really Sorry, Says Apple, Really We Are – Bits – Technology – New York Times Blog
Infrastructure is hard to do well. Not just physical servers, but the underlying technology that supports your application or service. You’ve got to do the fundamentals really well. I would be willing to bet that the companies that fail haven’t considered or taken the time to think about the fundamentals.
(Flickr photo by Johnnie W@lker)
Simple. Follow Sacha Chua’s great little presentation: How to sketch with the Nintendo DS
Even if you DO know, this obituary in the NYtimes.com will likely tell you things you don’t know. And if you don’t know, you will be glad you read this:
You just snap a photo with your digital camera-phone, email it to twitpic, and voila:
Saturday coffee at Indigo at yonge and Eglinton, Toronto on TwitPic
This is also a feature you can get at tumblr, as you can see here
With blogs, everyone could be a journalist. With sites like twitpic and tumblr, we can be photojournalists, too.
I am a big fan of The Long Now AND Edward Burtynsky! And here, in this blog post, The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » Edward Burtynsky, “The 10,000-year Gallery” is news they are working together! This is thrilling! See the post and the web site to see why.
Smart People I Know 